Fyffes plans to raise tens of millions of dollars in venture capital to fund its worldoffruit.com e-commerce company, which provides an Internet portal specifically designed for the world's fresh produce industry.

Fyffes itself has already committed €10 million (£7.8 million) in start-up capital for the new website. Fyffes' director, Mr Jimmy Tolan, said the group intended to raise "multiples" of that initial investment from venture capital providers and possibly from other companies in the fresh produce business.

He declined to give a specific figure on how much would be raised but added that given the amounts involved, it was likely that worldoffruit.com would raise its funds from large venture capital funds in the US and Britain. Fyffes' deputy chairman, Mr Carl McCann, raised the possibility of floating worldoffruit.com as a separately quoted public company if it was successful in carving out a share of the $250 billion (€248.9 billion) of fresh produce traded annually around the world.

Fyffes expects that 10 per cent of this will be traded on the Internet over a five-year period.

Fyffes itself is already trading on the site and, from January, aims to have external traders on the site. Worldoffruit.com includes FruitXchange, a business-to-business online trading system allowing electronic transactions from producers to retailers.